Orange skies just in time for Halloween

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Not exactly the best weather to go trick or treating in, but it sure did set the mood.

On Oct. 17, a massive dust storm rolled through the town of Lubbock, Texas. Much like the what happened in Phoenix in July, a strong windstorm kicked up a whole lot of dust from the drought-stricken area and turned their skies a spooky orange.

In checking the Lubbock airport it reported 91 degrees just before the storm struck, then the temperature dropped to 73 a few hours later as winds gusted as high as 64 mph. Wow!

Here are some time lapse videos of the event as found on YouTube:

Other Weekend Tidbits

Cloudy skies will likely prevent the Northwest from seeing two shows in the skies this weekend.

First up, the annual Orionid Meteor shower peaks early Saturday morning with those who can actually see the skies treated to about 15 meteors a minute. If you happen to be up early before dawn and you're feeling adventurous, just get away from city lights and find Orion and that's where the meteors will originate from.

Second, the wayward ROSAT space telescope is making its final laps around Earth and expected to crash home sometime Sunday. But as it makes its final passes, it's fairly bright. Check here to get times and where to look for it, although again, weather is not really cooperating.

Speaking of space

Dale Ireland in Silverdale snapped this photo of the ISS as it passed by over our area on Oct 18:

And while we're on the subject of ISS: I found this time lapse video showing how the space station sees thunderstorms from the air. (Similar to the "Southern Lights" video I posted a while back, only this one shows mostly thunderstorms. If I were on the ISS, I'd just park myself in front of the window for hours when it was dark and just watch.)

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Walk around the Puget Sound area and you'll notice trees starting to bloom and perhaps the whirr of a lawn mower or two, even though winter still had a solid 3-4 weeks left in its reign.

Seattle finished up February as the warmest on record, on the heels of a very warm January (and record-warm December) as well, and the early spring-time weather has in tandem brought out the first signs of spring.

In what will go down as one of the best -- or worst -- winters on record, depending on what you want out of a Seattle winter, now there will be some meteorological trophies to go along with the memories.

Seattle has set its record for all-time warmest February since official measurements began at Sea-Tac Airport. The average temperature (high temperature plus low temperature, divided by two) was 48.8 degrees narrowly edging 1977's record at 48.7. (And I mean narrowly. Had Saturday just been one degree cooler, it would have been a tied record instead.)